Outside the Box Project Beta Work - Main Menu Development

Figure 1. was how the Main Menu appeared in the build and project when we handed-in for Project Alpha in December after our milestone.

Figure 1.

Since I revamped the project when we came back with improved file structures, a remade and re-designed level I started to lose favour with the way our Main Menu originally looked, with the animation with the camera looking out the window and moving down to the table.

So like for the hand-in version, when I remade the Main Menu I kept the UI pieces fading in for visual effect, and I the code remained mostly the same. However I removed the animations, I say removed, but, what I really did was just not make them again for the remade project as I no longer needed them.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

With advice from one of my tutors, it was suggested to me that I find a way to showcase my Main Menu scene, as I had made these nice model but they weren't being shown with our previous version of the Main Menu.

So I decided to script it so that the main camera in the scene rotated on the spot in the centre of the room to showcase my models and for a more engaging scene. As seen in Figure's 4. and 5.

Figure 4.

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

Another student then assisted me with trying to make our game more professional with the inclusion of a load bar, to show the Player the progress of loading from one scene to the next. I could do this using Async, which would turn on a Slider UI piece and then fill the Slider between 0-1 based on the progress of the loading of the next scene during Async.

I couldn't get the load bar to show however, but the script functioned exactly as I wanted to by loading the next scene, just as it did before I implemented Async. It's just that the UI Slider wouldn't turn on despite it being a child of the canvas and being turned on in code.

Figure 7.

After a while I grew tired of our Main Menu with a rotating camera and decided that it wasn't right, it didn't feel right for our game. So I made a render of my Main Menu view in Maya with the right lighting, that I believe I wouldn't be able to replicate faithfully in Unity, in 4K resolution and filled the canvas view with the render image, work smarter not harder is what I thought as I knew I would have great difficulty replicating the lighting in Unity, hence the render image. (Figure 7.)

Figure 8.

I liked this new Main Menu design, not just for the nice view of all the models made for the Main Menu, not just for the decent lighting produced through the render, but because it gave me an opportunity to make the Main Menu a little more Diegetic. Selecting the Game Board begins a new game, whilst selecting the door will exit the game, like leaving the room and selecting the bed turns on another render image that shows the obscured wall next to the bed that will have a poster showcasing us in Credits.

Figure 9.

I then updated the scene with final textures and I also included a poster of an exit sign to make it more understandable where the Player may click to exit the game, as the eye and consequently the mouse, would be drawn to that area of the image, and the Player is likely to mouse over the door showing the indication that it can be interacted with.

Figure 10.

Figure 10. is the view of the Player is greeted with when they click on the bed to showcase the Credits poster, currently it has yet to be designed so the poster hasn't been implemented yet.

Figure 11.

After our last Milestone, where we pitched our game to Steve Goss and our tutors, I updated the texture of the game board in Maya and added some of the Defences to the board to show that the child has already built some of them. Then I made another render to replace the old image in Unity.